Not So Isolated, And More Than Extremist

Claudia Rosett, Forbes:

The airline bomber was an al-Qaida-linked terrorist. So why is Obama mincing words?

“Isolated extremist” was the label President Barack Obama initially slapped on the Nigerian Muslim who flew into Detroit on Christmas Day, burning himself in a botched attempt to take down the plane with explosives sewn into his underwear.

If anyone seems isolated here, it is the U.S. president himself. For three days after the terrorist attack, Obama carried on with his Hawaii holiday, “monitoring” the situation while leaving his staff to deal with the public. When Obama finally appeared on Monday to make a statement, he gave a boilerplate nod to the potential terror connections of the “suspect,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: “We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable.” But in the same statement he went on to say that “This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.”

At what point, in Obama’s scheme of the universe, did Abdulmutallab qualify as “isolated?”

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